Middlebury College

Online Carrel booking: Debrief

Monday marked the first time that seniors did not have to stand outside the library waiting in line to sign up for a thesis carrel. Booking online was not the smoothest of flights, but it did not crash and burn, either. We learned some things and there are some thing we have to fix, but overall, we are calling it a success.

The Good: It worked; the server didn’t crash; vast majority of those asked preferred this way to standing in lineThe Bad: Most of the errors were due to the communication with Banner – Millennium did not know they were taking a 500+ level class, so they couldn’t book online; pages loaded VERY slowlyThe Ugly: Some people booked multiple keys before they realized it was actually working, which prevented others from booking those keys

Some numbers:
• 200 total carrels
• 82 carrels booked in the first hour
• 26 carrels still available after 48 hours

A quote: “Bottom line: thank you so much for putting carrel signup online this year! I avoided all of my worst fears (no more carrels available by my turn in line, double bookings, etc.), and it was no more of a hassle than registration or room draw, which we’re all used to. It went really well.”

I asked some history seniors and the experience really varied. One student said it only too 15 minutes, but another was really frustrated, said it took him over an hour (90 minutes?). Another said it took about 45 minutes. Some thought it was too early, but when I explained we didn’t want to interfere with class time, they understood.